Thanks to everyone for their comments / feedback so far. ...and so just to throw a spanner in the works (or maybe not, we'll see) I've come up with something completely different Voila!
cw The filters and layer effects available in photoshop, though they're all quite cool, tend to cloud a designer's judgement and make his creations somewhat tacky and impractical. The designer ends up as a filter-monger and not much else and loses creativity and originality. IMHO the best logos are developed using paper/pencil and a vector illustration proggie like Illustrator. Using shadows in a logo design creates scalability issues, ie it will be illegible on small sizes. Shadows also take away the crispness of a design. However, if you still want to use a shadow, use it somewhat like its in the attachment.
Damn you guybrush - why do you have to be so....right! I can't take it any more - I've taken a look at your portfolio on your sites and have come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to pay you to get the job done! I'll drop you a PM. CW
#8 is the best. It looks good on business cards too. It's clean, very simple and the text can easily be read. I'm not for #3 although a lot of people like it.
OK first off, many thanks to everyone who has posted for your useful comments and feedback. In the end I went to DP memberguybrush for a professional finish to one of my original ideas. I would like to take this opportunity to leave a bit of a testimonial about the service which I received which was second to none. The transaction was completed completely via email and through the client area of their website and at a price that you really can't grumble at - Thanks And so here it is.... It works very nice on print, we are having exterior signage produced and it looks great on the website: www.cavaliermailing.com CW